Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract new traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured website. You will also understand how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you will drive web traffic automatically simply by adding fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any opportunity they can to improve their performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was going according to schedule in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for what seemed like 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 inch from the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems may seem ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to get certain results
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a button, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts such as your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and services.
External Sites & Services – Configuration
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content pointing back to your website is automatically added to these platforms. Your website will be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use the account information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, account information can be added to WordPress via a plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different solutions you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping the list of update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find, crawl and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to drive more web traffic is add content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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